ballp.it

So if you've made a post yet, you've seen that there was a dropdown for "Message Icon", where you could make your post a piece-of-paper-post, a light-bulb-post, or what have you. You've also probably noticed that there were a lot of goddamn paper posts because everyone just ignored that crap, and well they should.

Boots suggested I replace all the message icons with icons from JustRage, so I did a quick "Time That Would Take Me To Do vs. Time That Would Be Funny For" calculation and rejected it. Message icons have been yanked.There's still the "normal topic/hot topic/locked topic" icons, because those are useful, but at some point I want them to look more consistent with the earlier icons. (http://ballp.it/Themes/Giggle/images/off.png)

Title: Re: Get the fuck out of here, message icons.
Post by: Lemon on February 03, 2013, 09:30:05 am

Oh, and you can reply to announcements now.

Title: Re: Get the fuck out of here, message icons.
Post by: Lemon on February 03, 2013, 10:32:55 am

Title: Re: Get the fuck out of here, message icons.
Post by: Lemon on February 03, 2013, 12:17:26 pm

Ahhh, there we go. That's much better UX.

You've probably noticed the change, but I just redid topic icons to fit with the ballp.it look and feel. This is going to be an ongoing process of going through and remove every icon that's got distracting colors in it. Next up is gonna be the thumbs up/thumbs down thing I repurposed from thefpl.us and those unsightly contact icons.

INCIDENTALLY, if anyone's got a copy of illustrator and wants to lend a hand, I would love to get single color icons for the +1/-1 thing. Currently it's set to "dap" and "punch", so we could play with [fist and fist] & [fist and face], but I'm perfectly content with any other duality you might want to try out. Maybe [handjob] & [groin kick] or [beer] and [poison]? Whatever looks best. The big stipulation is that it has to be single color (black on transparent), and it has to look right at small sizes (26x26, probably).

Let me know, otherwise I'll try to dig something up.

(Oh and the image assets for the topic icons were created by VisualPharm (http://www.visualpharm.com/), who make very nice icons indeed.)

Title: Re: Get the fuck out of here, message icons.
Post by: Lemon on February 03, 2013, 04:31:16 pm

We're a lot closer to a cohesive look tonite. It should be no secret that I'm completely aping (or stealing, depending on how you define things) a number of aspects of Google's design scheme. Specifically the color palette. Going forward, the icons are supposed to be...

Action

Information

Navigation

Or at least that's the idea. There's plenty of stuff left to do, but I think the left and right sides of the thread view are a lot less cluttered and hopefully are getting out of the way of post readin'

A smattering of small changes made. Nothing that's particularly attention grabbing, but just a little more consistency across the board.

I spent about 40 minutes today trying to figure out how to convey the command "Mark As Unread" graphically. Most efforts use an envelope, which is crap. So far my best solution is "Eye With Cataracts", which I think gets the point across. But, I don't have the whole set ready, so it's gonna wait.

General background color of site changed from #fff (full white) to #f9f9f9 (what we call a "hussy white")

New icon for recent posts

Fixed indicator icon on top of polls page.

ballp.it no longer will add the "Re:" prefix to every post reply you write. All posts written before their change will retain their "Re:" prefix, as a reminder to us all about what a stupid convention that is.

Author block, (that is, that shit over to the left of what I'm writing) now contains a Steam icon for those people who've entered a Steam ID. Curiously, this was the most laborious change of the night, and also the most overlookable, so please pay a second's attention to those 16 pixels or I'll start thinking I wasted my time on that.

And now, for a secret: There's an emote that looks like a Paula Deen recipe.

Post Actions (quote/tattle) have been condensed into a single horizontal line of actions. I'm much happier with that look.

Thread Actions (New Topic/Notify/et al) on top and bottom of thread view have been changed to red (action) color. I'm thinking about turning these into graphical icons, but I'm not sure if I'm going to do that or not.

Form buttons (input[type="button"]) changed color

Wrote an overdue post on The Prime Directive (http://ballp.it/index.php?topic=106). Eventually that needs to be added to the Register & Help pages.

Changed the expand/collapse icon in postview to the ballpit standard ((http://ballp.it/Themes/Giggle/images/icons/16/expand.png))

Left Info section of Profile view much closer matches the threaded view

Users can no longer tattle on their own posts

A few secret emotes added to bring the list up to 37. This will be good news if you ever need to conjure up someone who is none too keen on the gays.

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Lemon on February 23, 2013, 08:53:03 am

At this point, you've probably noticed the new ballp.it logo, which I think is quite lovely. It was drawn by KingKalamari (http://ballp.it/index.php?action=profile;u=63), who probably deserves a piece of your affection so we don't have to stare at that other header anymore. While we're at it, the favicon.ico has been changed. If you're still seeing an F+ logo, that'll change eventually.

The only other thing worth mentioning at the moment is that I changed the styling for featured (multibulbed) post. That gradient wasn't working for me, so I replaced the topline with a string of stars. Also, I've lowered the threshold for multibulb posts to 3+. That might get raised later on, but for now there's some frugality inre: bulbs.

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Lemon on February 25, 2013, 06:56:03 pm

YouTube videos can now be added to posts. FTP links capability has been removed, since that button made no sense at all.

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Lemon on March 18, 2013, 12:23:21 pm

Just added 10 new secretemoticons, all of them facial hair related.

(I can't grow a beard. [stubble])

Title: The Changelog
Post by: montrith on March 18, 2013, 01:15:21 pm

Great. Now all you need to do is to come up with a PG emote for Maggot-Faggot.[stab]

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Lemon on March 18, 2013, 10:30:30 pm

...so I thought "Okay, let me see if I can meet that request. I'll start by searching for 'maggot faggot'...

Surprisingly work-safe link (http://comafluff.deviantart.com/art/Faggot-Maggot-214892003). Okay, well, that's cute, but I don't think it really translates to a 16px icon. or comes of as particularly faggoty. What do I get if I try 'gay worm'?

Some of them are tricky, some of them you'd never stumble on. For example, Brian Blessed has a pretty great beard. [blessed].Also, Josef Stalin, Salvador Dali and Wyatt Earp all had terrific mustaches. [stalin] [dali] [earp].

That's the end of the proper name ones (for now).

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Lemon on March 31, 2013, 09:10:59 am

Images too big for posts are now scaled down via CSS (max-width:98%), so a huge image won't make a scrollbar in the post anymore.(as it's a CSS change, cache cleaning may be necessary to see this)

ballp.it has been moved to the thefpl.us server (freeboners.info). Things seem pretty smooth, but most avatars are broken. I'm working on this.

update: Avatars are fixed except for Lemon's. Nerd details: Simple Machines stores the avatar images as files without extensions, so when I uploaded them via ftp they were automatically transferred in ASCII and turned into useless poop.

I see you've made some changes to the post-count icons. I fully support you giving Isfahan a special one again.

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Delcat on May 26, 2013, 03:01:38 am

I only just realized that Isfahan's new post-count icons are dudes in helmets and not cute little piggies. You two may have to brawl that one out.

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Chaz on June 05, 2013, 12:43:59 pm

I'm curious as to what the sheep post icons are about. I just got upgraded from Trek to Sheep a few posts ago, and I dunno if there was an actual post count milestone for that or if something else happened.

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Isfahan on June 05, 2013, 05:19:30 pm

I just got upgraded from Trek to Sheep a few posts ago, and I dunno if there was an actual post count milestone for that or if something else happened.Chaz, June 05, 2013, 12:43:59 pm

As a New Zealander I don't know whether to be outraged by the fact that other countries have sheep, or overjoyed at the fact that one day, if I forum very very hard, I too may have sheep in my profile.

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Delcat on June 17, 2013, 03:37:36 am

As a New Zealander I don't know whether to be outraged by the fact that other countries have sheep, or overjoyed at the fact that one day, if I forum very very hard, I too may have sheep in my profile.gee golly gosh, June 14, 2013, 05:49:10 pm

Well, in my experience we get the brunt of the sheep-fucking jokes, so you can take that as a plus. Unless New Zealanders also get those, but it seems less likely as the division in Britain fosters in-fighting of that level.

("Little boy, I don't know how to tell you this, but there's a man making love to the sheep in your field!""Oh, no worry, that's just me daa-aaaa-aaaa!")

As a New Zealander I don't know whether to be outraged by the fact that other countries have sheep, or overjoyed at the fact that one day, if I forum very very hard, I too may have sheep in my profile.gee golly gosh, June 14, 2013, 05:49:10 pm

Well, in my experience we get the brunt of the sheep-fucking jokes, so you can take that as a plus. Unless New Zealanders also get those, but it seems less likely as the division in Britain fosters in-fighting of that level.

("Little boy, I don't know how to tell you this, but there's a man making love to the sheep in your field!""Oh, no worry, that's just me daa-aaaa-aaaa!")Delcat, June 17, 2013, 03:37:36 am

At one point during my youth there was a tourism campaign inciting people to visit NZ with the tagline '65 million sheep can't be wrong.' At the point in time, the human population of NZ was 3.5 million.

We're down to 42 million sheep now, but still far, far outnumbered, and while we don't have the in-fighting of the UK, we do have Australia.

Lower the rope to Roy and pull him out?Throw him the rubber bathing ring in the shape of a sea-horse?Look around for a stopcock, or some sort of Janitor who can turn off the water?Wrap Roy Orbison in Clingfilm?

The correct answer is "Wrap Roy Orbison in Clingfilm!"

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Lemon on July 23, 2013, 03:02:02 pm

It took me way too long to think of this, but you see this post? This is not a classy post.

[fedora] Now this post is classy.

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Lemon on December 30, 2013, 02:57:25 pm

I added a mobile expanding/collapsing menu on thefpl.us, so now you can access the sidebar on your phone.

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Lemon on December 30, 2013, 05:11:48 pm

Couple more changes to that header thing. Expanded the smallest form breakpoint to a maximum of 450 pixels, adjusted the header logo (Pricedown was kind of a fucked up font choice there), and... some other stuff.

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Lemon on February 03, 2014, 12:28:32 pm

Two small but noticeable changes just made.

Changed the default font from the Arial stack to Droid Sans (http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Droid+Sans). I like it better, but I'm not completely sold. Open to suggestions if you got one. (Currently just wanna run with one global font, so it has to be versatile)

Page navigation is been made a lot bigger for mobile devices. That was a problem I had, so I was happy to get it addressed.

While I'm at it, if there's a specific bit of navigation that's bothering you on ballp.it, let me know. I'm just changing stuff as I notice it.

Played with some max-sizes in the preview screen, so it better represents the final post (mainly in images)

Quoting an image will impose a very small dimension confine (200x120) to the quoted image. This imposed "thumbnail view" should make it so you can quote an image in your post without having a massive screenload happen. For example, here is a 1400x1400 square:

(http://placehold.it/1400x1400)

Both of these are CSS-only changes. Ctrl+F5 to grab the new stylesheet.

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Lemon on February 12, 2014, 01:52:18 pm

The hamburger menu for thefpl.us mobile was broken for a little bit, but it's working again.

There's also a secret menu now that isn't listed in the hamburger menu. Try ordering your podcast "Dragon style".

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Lemon on February 22, 2014, 04:46:11 pm

It only recently occurred to me that I can use the <audio> element to allow people to listen to F+ episodes directly on the site, ep128 has a working example. I'll play with this idea a bit in the coming weeks, at which point thefpl.us will be basically inaccessible to anyone using IE8. And fuck them.

the content will still be accessible to IE8 people, just not rendered inline. (or you could keep doing shitty-ass shit with <object> or whatever but who gives a fuck).

Also <audio> doesn't really do all that much for you by default so you might want to use a wrapper library like http://jplayer.org/ or something.

(Also it's a good thing you remembered to set preload to metadata-only, although you might want to set it to 'none' since I think metadata-only can still incur a lot of bandwidth on certain user agents.)

Right, but I don't care about IE8 people. There's a lot of great new technology out there, it's not worth spending time supporting people who are actively making the internet worse.

The audio container wasn't the entirety of the point anyway though. I'm gonna redo that whole stripe (again), but this time with SVG and I'll be goddamned if I'm gonna make PNG fallbacks for people using bad browsers.

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Lemon on March 11, 2014, 11:34:56 am

Writing a post on a phone (or especially tablet) was kind of frustrating the other day, so I bumped up the textarea font-size quite a bit (160%) for displays under 768px. It's not the prettiest text editor you'll ever see, but it's much easier to edit, imo.

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Lemon on May 05, 2014, 09:57:26 pm

Added new favicons for both thefpl.us and ball.pit.

The F Plus one is barely noticeable change, just that it comes from a higher-res source (64x64 rather than 32x32), so it'll read better in bookmark apps & some mobile devices. ballp.it's favicon is a more noticeable change, hinting at a new drawing I got from King Kalamari a couple weeks back that I plan to have up on this site sometime over the weekend.

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Lemon on May 20, 2014, 10:01:46 pm

Login page restyled.

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Lemon on May 21, 2014, 08:28:53 pm

Yeah, that login page had some terrible ideas in it.

I measured the geometry in vh (viewport height) units, which is a shitty idea for a page like that because on a mobile device, click any form element and you get the keyboard. Pop up a keyboard and your viewport size is half as tall. So... yeah, mistakes.

Anyway, re-restyled that. Same general idea, just better executed.

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Lemon on May 21, 2014, 09:25:21 pm

Search box looks waaaaaaaaaaaaay different on mobile devices. Also the control nav (the thing that pops down from the hamburger button) is better.

The new posts icon is fucking enormous now. Is this Google Chrome fucking up or an intentional feature?

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Lemon on May 27, 2014, 09:47:19 pm

The new posts icon is fucking enormous now. Is this Google Chrome fucking up or an intentional feature?Mister Smalls, May 27, 2014, 09:11:17 pm

Try control+F5.

Title: The Changelog
Post by: nilvoid on May 28, 2014, 02:52:21 am

I'm using Firefox right now, so I don't know what the new post icon looks like in other browsers, but to me it looks like this (http://i.imgur.com/hXBRvHq.png) before I mouse over it. When I do mouse over it, the blue line underneath the bubble disappears and reappears on the right side of the bubble*.

*Edit: I just noticed this, but the line to the right of the moused-over bubble doesn't appear in the subforums, but on the main page of the forum it does.

Title: The Changelog
Post by: Lemon on May 28, 2014, 08:33:00 am

Yeah, I kind of botched this graphic. Ill make it nicer when I get home tonite.

Like, in the middle of June, Ambious put in a pull request to fix the issue where ballp.it thought your post was blank if it only contained a video element. I totally didn't notice that until now. Oops.

On Firefox for Android, pressing the button also highlights invisible text somewhere or something. The ' select all' button appears and those pointers that appear around words appear around the hamburger

On Firefox for Android, pressing the button also highlights invisible text somewhere or something. The ' select all' button appears and those pointers that appear around words appear around the hamburgerA Meat, March 30, 2017, 06:07:33 am

Slight cleanup to the user profile (https://ballp.it/index.php?action=profile;u=6) page. Also I made it so a user's recent posts (https://ballp.it/index.php?action=profile;area=showposts;u=6) page looks similar to the global recent posts template.

I don't particularly like this layout, but it's used uncommonly enough that I'm okay with it just being somewhat better for now.

Thanks to some work from Boots, ballp.it can now display bulb stats for each user (https://ballp.it/index.php?action=profile;area=statistics;u=19). Every profile will say how many bulbs that person has received as well as how many times that person has bulbed someone else. In addition, wherever applicable, each profile will display the 10 most bulbed posts a person has ever written.

This also puts us on a path towards other bulb-focused views, which is fun.

Edit:Yay! It worked! Alright, so, I've been changing around the layout of the thread view a bit, one of the things I wanted to touch was the duplicate content in just listing that thread title over and over again. So:

If it's the first post, it will display the title of the thread.

If it's a reply, but the subject was changed by the poster, it will display the subject they changed it to.

Otherwise, it will show "Reply #XXX"

Regardless, the active link is still a direct link to the post itself.

Edit:Yay! It worked! Alright, so, I've been changing around the layout of the thread view a bit, one of the things I wanted to touch was the duplicate content in just listing that thread title over and over again. So:

If it's the first post, it will display the title of the thread.

If it's a reply, but the subject was changed by the poster, it will display the subject they changed it to.

I might be completely alone on this, but I appreciated the repeating thread title. When I come here I usually go to the new posts page and middle click all the ones I feel like reading, giving me several open tabs. Without the thread titles it's sometimes quite difficult to tell which forum I'm in - is someone saying something goofy in a thread for complaining, or quoting someone goofy in internet.txt? Now I have to look up to the tab bar to reorient myself each time, when before I didn't have to. Thread title might be redundant information, but it's information that I use, whereas "reply #1107" doesn't help me at all.

I really like how there's blue text in certain places now so I guess it's kind of a wash for me I don't know.International Congress on Love and Sex with Sherman Tanks, January 16, 2019, 03:38:30 pm

I like the blue text as well. The only thing that's weird to me about it is that there's a lot more blue text inside forums than on the home page of the forums. I don't know what would be made blue there though? It's very minor and not a complaint as much as a thing that I notice.

K, adjusted quote syntax again, this should cover a bunch of edge cases. I also added some CSS rules for Long URL's breaking the display. As a result, the quotes and URLs on this page (https://ballp.it/index.php?topic=2892.45) should be fine on any display.

Hey is it a recent change that I canít see post date on mobile? It really sucks because if I click a thread I canít tell when I should start reading, especially if itís one that was resurrected from years ago.

Hey is it a recent change that I canít see post date on mobile? It really sucks because if I click a thread I canít tell when I should start reading, especially if itís one that was resurrected from years ago.beelzeboob, January 24, 2019, 08:38:31 pm

So that's not actually a recent change. That's been true as long as there was an optimized mobile display.

Now that said, I do have an idea of a design that would bring it back, but that also means overhauling the post display, something I'm not ready to do at this time

I was trying to post a poll earlier today and I realized at some point in redesigning the new post interface (https://github.com/AhoyLemon/ballpit/issues/52), I accidentally partly broke it.

At this moment, the "Add Option" button is broken, and as such you're limited to the number of options to poll about. Note for myself, will fix it when I can figure out how. New issue created (https://github.com/AhoyLemon/ballpit/issues/58).

At this moment, the "Add Option" button is broken, and as such you're limited to the number of options to poll about. Note for myself, will fix it when I can figure out how. New issue created (https://github.com/AhoyLemon/ballpit/issues/58).Lemon, March 18, 2019, 08:06:53 pm

Oh, I fixed this 10 days ago.

Was just coming here to post that I found and quickly resolved (https://github.com/AhoyLemon/ballpit/issues/60) a display bug with quoted images.

Okay, so I made a change I'd been thinking about for some time. Here's the general idea:

Because the ballp.it design goes wall-to-wall, more elaborate posts with several paragraphs become hard to read (at least for me) on a larger monitor display. There's a whole bunch of disagreements on the actual "perfect" line-length, but it's broadly agreed over 75 characters on a line and a block of text's scanability becomes compromised. There's a bunch of use cases where you could get over 200.

So, I played around with an idea, which is running on the site right now, mostly affecting the threaded view. If you look at ballp.it on a larger monitor, and you've got thoughts to share on it, go right ahead.

Also, posts themselves take up about half of my monitor, which, again, idk if that's intentional, but its....very big for me. (I can also just zoom out if I'm the outlier here, so its not a huuuuuge deal) I'm not against bumping the size up a bit in general, though

I felt like the forum text was a bit too big but then I opened the new post form and WOW that's big.

I think the confusing thing about the new list of recent posts is that it changes the way that posts are sorted. I don't intuitively know whether the "most recent" post is on the left or the right side.

Also left to right for two columns only is really weird. Like intolerably so.1 23 45 67 8

Mostly I just don't want to read any of it. ._.

Also big text sure. That I can get used to though it is odd. The prior comments thing overwhelms my mind though. It's too much to take in. I usually try not to complain about changes but... I hate this.

I'm curious what this looks like on other people's screens that it's intolerable. On my screen, the text is large but I don't particularly mind because it's not like I'm looking at anything else, and the replies are something I have to scroll down to even see - which I don't do because I don't need to reread what people have said by the time I hit the reply button. I mean in that sense it doesn't help that they're there but I don't mind it.

I'm curious what this looks like on other people's screens that it's intolerable. On my screen, the text is large but I don't particularly mind because it's not like I'm looking at anything else, and the replies are something I have to scroll down to even see - which I don't do because I don't need to reread what people have said by the time I hit the reply button. I mean in that sense it doesn't help that they're there but I don't mind it.Turtle, August 28, 2019, 11:11:30 pm

I frequently react fast and like to review to make sure I'm not just repeating something or misunderstanding something. And sometimes read back even further to get context i may not have had from the second post on a page.

I donít dislike the larger font per se, but I donít like how inconsistent it is now. The reply box font is way larger than the font of the actual posts, and a lot of the UI elements are tiny in comparison.

All the blank space on the right looks pretty bad to me, just unbalanced and kind of bizarre. That's especially true when nothing else does the same thing - bulb/quote/edit feel a bit orphaned now and going from scanning down the left to flicking my eyes way over to the other side of the screen feels quite unnatural, which seems to be the opposite of your intention. In general, if content isn't going to fill my screen I prefer it in the centre so it's a bit more balanced.

This is also true of several elements of the reply page right now - the embed icons protrude past the elements above and below, the post/preview buttons are floating way out there, and the post history below also still goes across the screen. This screenshot shows what I mean:

(https://i.imgur.com/JGMnpmnl.png)

While I'm thinking of the most recent posts in that screen, I can't say I'm getting along particularly with the tiled recent replies. Maybe I just need to get used it it, but it's slowed me down following the previous conversation on this thread while writing this. It also means there's a lot of empty space again where there's one long post (like this one) next to a short one that still has to occupy the same vertical space.

Also just a note (probably one you're aware of), the preview doesn't seem to crunch over in the same way the post itself will.

Bug report rather than aesthetics complaint this time. I think this might be a new thing connected to the update as I haven't seen it before. On mobile (chrome, with ballp.it as an applet off my home screen) the reply field seems to scroll rightwards infinitely for me rather than wrapping. The only way to navigate back to the left of the page where everything is seems to be to put the cursor in the text and select backwards. The text all appears on one line so it's really difficult to reread (and find the post button but in my case that may be a feature). On android, fairly recently updated.

Bug report rather than aesthetics complaint this time. I think this might be a new thing connected to the update as I haven't seen it before. On mobile (chrome, with ballp.it as an applet off my home screen) the reply field seems to scroll rightwards infinitely for me rather than wrapping. The only way to navigate back to the left of the page where everything is seems to be to put the cursor in the text and select backwards. The text all appears on one line so it's really difficult to reread (and find the post button but in my case that may be a feature). On android, fairly recently updated.boooo566, September 04, 2019, 01:30:13 pm

Ooh, I'm getting that too On my phone. Not sure why that's happening, but I can fix.